Maps and Compasses

Get out the OS one inch scale
No.58, if that's the one
we made most progress on

last time we lacked direction.
Spread it on the floor,
I'll clear up the cups,

the pepper vodka,
the remains of the sweet and sour
we had last night or the night before.

How is it that the place
you want is always on
the edge of adjacent maps,

one of which you haven't got,
the other in need of refolding
so paths are easier to spot?

And wrestling the thing to see
what PH means becomes
a manoeuvre of unique agility.

There are places here you'd never
think you'd see. A pub where
last orders were called last year,

a stream sewn with trout,
a church inside of which
a women kneels devout,

for all we know not one thing of her
or why she prays in this church
with spire, by a coffee stain.

And so, to get our bearings,
once we place the compass
like yarrow stalks thrown randomly,

the needle's a blur of magnetic rain
pointing out our new direction;
somewhere north-west of lost.